The Sixth Day

by Terry Bisson

But the city had wanted the power, the boaters had wanted the lake, and the mayor had wanted the immortality (more or less) of having a dam named after him.

  The four lane narrowed to two lanes, then to one as it angled across Survant Dam.

  Adam slowed to fifty on the dam, still steering with his clenched fist.

  To the right he saw the silvery gleam of Survant lake; to the left, he saw a few yards of brush, and then—emptiness.

  He should have been watching the rearview mirror. He was caught by surprise when the SUV slammed into the Caddy …

  * * *

  The Cadillac was in the middle of the dam when the SUV caught up.

  Marshall pulled alongside on the right. He cranked the wheel to the left, once, twice …

  Crash!

  Crash!

  The Cadillac was heavy, but not heavy enough. Marshall had to smile when he saw that Gibson had no steering wheel. Even his steel grip couldn’t keep the big car on the road.

  Rocking from side to side, the Cadillac careened off the shoulder, through a chain-link fence, and over the rocky lip of Hell Gorge.

  * * *

  Marshall jammed on his brakes.

  He skidded to a stop and leaned out his window. His smile grew as he watched the Cadillac arcing through space, tumbling end over end, down into the gorge.

  He put the SUV into park. Motioning for Vincent to join him, he got out. Together, they crept toward the edge, where the broken fence hung down.

  Together, they peered over.

  They saw white water, far below, dashing itself onto razor sharp rocks.

  “That was spectacular,” said Vincent. “Don’t get to see car crashes like that anymore.”

  Marshall nodded in agreement. “Except in the old flat-movies.”

  He sighed. It had been a long day. But sometimes the work was its own reward.

  * * *

  Fifteen feet below, holding his breath, Adam clung to the dangling section of chain-link fence. He tried not to look down at the rocks and water far below. He had already tried it once, and it had made his blood run cold.

  Straining, he pulled himself up inch by inch, toward the top of the cliff.

  Then he paused. Were those voices above him?

  They were. Familiar voices.

  “Saves us having to get rid of the body.”

  “Not to mention the car.”

  Adam heard footsteps as the two thugs headed back for the SUV.

  Adam breathed a sigh of relief and pulled himself up another foot. Another two.

  Then the last post holding the fence gave way.

  Adam dropped ten feet, the fence scraping loudly over the rocks, before it caught again and he jerked to a stop.

  * * *

  “Son of a bitch! There he is again!” said Marshall. He and Vincent ran back to the edge.

  There, less than twenty feet below them, was the man they had been sent to kill.

  “Hold my belt!” said Marshall.

  He clicked the safety off his foosh gun and leaned out over the dizzying space. He took aim at Adam Gibson, who was swinging from the dangling fence.

  Foosh! Foosh!

  Missed! This one would hit.

  Marshall leaned out even farther, took careful aim—and saw the man hanging from the fence look back at him with a look of pure hatred.

  And let go before he could fire.

  Marshall and Vincent were both silent as they watched the tiny, tumbling figure get tinier and tinier, and then, after what seemed an eternity, disappear into the raging white water.

  Marshall didn’t smile this time.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Vincent. He started back for the SUV, holstering his gun. “Let’s get people looking for this guy down river.”

  “You don’t think he lived through that?” said Vincent, as they got into the SUV.

  Marshall studied his partner. “You want to bet your paycheck against it?” He started the SUV and put it into gear. “I don’t.”

  * * *

  A quarter of a mile downstream, the white water gave way to turbulent rapids. The river was deep here, but less deep; swift but less swift. Deadly, but slightly less deadly.

  Empty, but slightly less empty.

  In fact, there was a man in the water, swimming toward shore. It was a big man, who was weary and waterlogged.

  The big, wet man pulled himself up out of the water, onto the rocks of the steep shore. He lay on his stomach, gasping for breath. Gradually his breathing grew more regular.

  He rolled over on his back and rested, looking up at the faraway stars, as if for guidance. Then he stood up and started walking toward the lights of the city in the distance.

  Thirteen

  The sign on the broad lawn outside was modest:

  REPLACEMENT TECHNOLOGIES

  The complex itself was state of the art—a circular high-tech windowless building connected to a tower with an airy, all glass public atrium. It looked like the consulate for an unnamed, alien, and relatively advanced civilization.

  The spacious atrium inside the tower was open to the public. Theoretically, anyway.

  Today the public was represented by a small but orderly group of protesters carrying signs that bore a variety of anti-cloning slogans and biblical passages. The protesters chanted together:

  THERE IS BUT ONE CREATOR!

  MAKE LOVE NOT CLONES!

  STOP ORGAN AND PET CLONING!

  They were held back by a bored looking squad of police, a mixture of municipal and private cops. And some of the private cops were off-duty municipals.

  The task of the police was to keep a passage open from the curb to the doorway, which they did. At one end of the passage, limousines deposited black-tie–clad revelers. The guests took great pains to ignore the protesters, who responded by chanting louder and louder, as if the sound of their chanting could somehow deny entry.

  But entry would not be denied.

  As the steady stream of black-tie guests entered the round, welcoming atrium, they were met by a hologram of their host, Michael Drucker.

  “Thanks for visiting Replacement Technologies. We’re in the business of life.”

  Then he disappeared, and the entering stream of guests activated another hologram—this one of a scientist in a lab coat.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Griffin Weir. Welcome to the new home of the Weir Organ Transplant Facility here at Replacement Technologies.”

  Between the two holograms, behind a velvet rope, a number of reporters were interviewing the real Dr. Griffin Weir.

  “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “Some of those people are here tonight. But I’m not going to tell you who. You know better than that.”

  A reporter stepped forward, insistent. “Cardinal de la Jolla’s been quite open about…”

  Dr. Weir shut him up with a wave of his hand. “If a patient wants to discuss their medical condition, that’s fine. It doesn’t mean their doctor can.”

  A few yards away, toward the center of the airy, marbled atrium, Weir’s boss was playing host, welcoming the very eminence that was the subject of the reporter’s questions.

  “We’re honored to have you here, Your Eminence,” said Drucker.

  The cardinal smiled. “Griffin Weir saved my life, and I’m not shy about saying so.”

  “Hey, Boss!”

  All heads turned toward the famous Road Runners quarterback, Johnny Phoenix. They saw a handsome but arrogant young man whose Saville Row suit and garish gold chains were at war, or at least scrimmage.

  “Hey, Johnny,” said Drucker. “Welcome. How’s my star quarterback?”

  “I’d say I was feeling like a million dollars, except I’d hate to take a cut in pay.”

  This sally was greeted with laughter, as Drucker covered his ears in mock horror. “Don’t remind me!”

  The cardinal put an ancient claw on the young man’s arm. “That was some hit you took last week. Be careful, son. We don’t want you getting killed out there.”

>   Scanning the room with studied nonchalance, Drucker noticed that Dr. Weir needed to be rescued from the reporters.

  “Excuse me, Your Eminence.”

  Drucker hurried across the atrium, slipping through the crowd unnoticed. He ducked under the rope and began to work his way forward, as the questioning continued.

  “Dr. Weir,” said a reporter. “Protesters say that cloning human organs will inevitably lead to cloning whole humans.”

  Weir dismissed the idea with a practiced wave of his hand.

  “That’s not only illegal, we’re years away from the technical ability to do it.”

  “But a human was cloned over ten years ago,” put in another reporter.

  “And,” said Weir, “we all know the outcome of that bizarre experiment. The Supreme Court ordered that the clone be destroyed. Which, under the circumstances, was the humane thing to do…”

  Drucker had finally made his way to the front. He stepped forward and put his hand on Weir’s shoulder as the doctor finished his reply.

  “… but which led to the laws against human cloning, and set back the course of legitimate research by many years.”

  “Mr. Drucker!” a reporter called out. “You gave one hundred million dollars…”

  Drucker shook his head. “Sorry. This is Dr. Weir’s night!”

  Another reporter called out.

  “Dr. Weir, is it true that you are trying to get the Sixth Day laws repealed?”

  Drucker pulled Weir away, saying: “Dr. Weir is interested in medicine, not politics.”

  The two started to make their way toward the center of the atrium, where the party was getting underway, but the reporters were not to be denied. One followed, calling out:

  “Mr. Drucker. The protesters claim that you run RePet at a loss to soften people up to the idea of human cloning.”

  Drucker stopped. His expression changed. It became less soft, more ruthless; but in a way more visionary, too.

  “We shouldn’t forget,” he said, “that not long ago there were almost literally no more fish in the sea. Half the world’s population faced a real danger of hunger. Our cloning technology helped turn that around. Our patents on NewSalmon and NewTuna and drought-resistant cattle made us the fastest growing company of the century.”

  He looked out the glass front of the building toward the protesters.

  “The extremists hate to admit that they’d rather the world went hungry than eat cloned fish. So instead, they keep yelling about human cloning.”

  The reporter pressed his point: “Do you think the human cloning laws need to be changed?”

  “Let me answer that question with a question: suppose a ten-year-old boy lies in a hospital bed dying of liver cancer. Thanks to Dr. Weir’s work, we can save this boy. But in the next bed, there may be another ten-year-old boy, whose parents love him just as much, only this boy has an inoperable brain tumor. You can’t clone a brain. The only way to save him would be to clone the whole person.”

  Drucker paused. The atrium was almost still. A crowd had gathered to hear his remarks.

  “How do you tell that boy’s parents that we can save the first boy, but the research that could have saved their son wasn’t done because of a law from the last century?”

  Without waiting for a response, Drucker turned on his heel and walked away with Dr. Weir on his arm.

  The reporter clicked off his recorder and watched in silence.

  A few of the people who had been listening applauded. They were joined by a few more people, and then by many more people applauding.

  Drucker acknowledged them with a grin and a wave, and he swept on down the hall.

  “I thought you needed rescuing,” he said in a low voice to Weir, as soon as they were out of earshot of the reporters.

  “Thanks, Michael, I was!” Weir wiped his brow, more from nervousness than need. “Have you seen Catherine?”

  “Not for a while…” Drucker’s voice rose to a normal level as he approached a small clump of extremely well-dressed men.

  “Aaah, Mr. Speaker! Glad you could make it. Griffin, this is Congressman Day, Speaker of the House.”

  “A pleasure, Dr. Weir,” said the congressman.

  “Griffin was just looking for his wife,” said Drucker.

  The politician dropped the doctor’s hand and waved him on with a smile and an imperial gesture. “Don’t let me keep you, then.”

  Griffin Weir headed off, scanning the crowd.

  The Speaker of the House and Michael Drucker stood together in that zone of solitude the famous and powerful share.

  “That was quite a speech,” said the speaker.

  “You heard that?” Drucker appeared abashed. “I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

  “Really,” said the speaker. “Your words meant a great deal to me.” He lowered his voice only a bit, but the effect was dramatic. “You see, as it happens, I have a son with an inoperable tumor of the brain.”

  Drucker appeared surprised. “My God, Mr. Speaker, I had no idea…”

  “No, no! It’s quite all right. It gave me a lot to think about. In fact, it’s given me a different view of the whole subject.”

  Drucker looked around quickly, but unobtrusively, to make sure they were alone.

  “Mr. Speaker, would you like to have a drink in my office upstairs?”

  * * *

  Dr. Weir made his way through the party, returning this greeting, that handshake, always scanning the outside of the crowd. That’s where he would find her. Catherine hated crowds.

  Finally he saw her in an alcove at the top of a stairway that led to a broad terrace overlooking the atrium below.

  She was a handsome woman, well dressed, with soft eyes and an even softer smile.

  “Catherine … are you all right?”

  She nodded and squeezed his hand. “Just feeling a little like I don’t belong. But I’m fine, really.”

  Dr. Weir knew too much about medicine, and about his wife, to believe her.

  “No, you’re not. Shall I call Dr. Stevens?”

  “No. I just overdid it.” She got up slowly and painfully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil your big night.”

  Dr. Weir put his arm around her and together they started down the stairs. “Nonsense. I’ll get a car to take you home.”

  As he walked with his wife toward the exit, smiling and nodding at the well-dressed guests, Weir caught a brief glimpse of a less than well-dressed guest.

  Actually, he realized quickly, it was not really a guest but the security chief, Marshall, and even from his quick glance, Dr. Weir could see he looked troubled.

  Weir signalled to Marshall that he had seen him, then turned back to Catherine, and walked with her to the waiting limo.

  Fourteen

  One of the privileges of power is elevation.

  Take, for example, the private office of the CEO of Replacement Technologies.

  A wall of glass overlooked a city so far below, so distant in its noise and cares, concerns and pollution, that it seemed a lifeless reef of stars. A mere backdrop for more important matters.

  Two men stood at the window, sipping brandy. Both men were well accustomed to power, its perquisites, its privileges … and its limitations.

  “I was forty when Billy was born,” said the speaker. “Didn’t know if I’d want another kid so late. But now—I love him so goddamn much…”

  The big man was choked up. He put his hand to his face.

  Michael Drucker looked away tactfully while the Speaker of the House regained his customary, indeed his legendary composure. Then after a decent interval, he asked:

  “What if it were possible to do something for your son? Only it was highly illegal. Would you consider it?”

  “Of course I would,” said the speaker. “That’s the same kind of hypothetical situation that…”

  Drucker gently raised a hand. “Don’t answer so fast. You’d be risking a mandatory minimum sentence of forty years if it ev
er came out.”

  The speaker could hardly believe what he was hearing. “But would he be—cured?”

  “He’d be back exactly as he was before,” said Drucker. “In perfect health. He’d never know what happened. But if the secret ever came out, with the law the way it is, he’d be put to sleep like a rabid dog; he’d be destroyed like a race horse with a broken leg.”

  The congressman knocked back his brandy. “But if it never came out, or if the laws were changed one day…?”

  “Then your son would have nothing to worry about.”

  Fifteen

  As he sat facing the police lieutenant in a cramped cubicle in the 509 precinct, Adam looked down at his pants and sighed in frustration. This would probably be easier, he thought, if I was wearing a suit and tie instead of ripped clothes covered with mud.

  But I am reporting a crime! And this cop is particularly slow …

  “Please!” he said. “Just go to my house and get my wife and daughter. If I go back, they’ll kill them.”

  Instead of picking up the phone, the lieutenant picked up Adam’s thumb and pressed it against a pad on the desk.

  He studied the file that came up on the screen. “You made a completely different police report an hour ago.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Adam said, with as much patience as he could muster.

  “According to this you did. And they checked your thumbprint.”

  “That must have been the clone,” Adam explained.

  The lieutenant’s look was anything but understanding.

  “Look, I know it sounds crazy,” Adam said. “I hardly believe it myself.”

  The lieutenant checked the screen again. “Was your car stolen or not?”

  “Yes, that was me.”

  The lieutenant looked relieved. A little. “So you did report it.”

  “No,” Adam said. “It was me that took it.”

  The lieutenant lost his look of relief. His voice turned sharp, impatient. “You stole your own car?”

  “Hello.”

  Both men looked up.

  A holographic image of a virtual attorney, complete with Brooks Brothers suit and a hard-shell attaché case, had appeared in the air behind the desk.

  “I am your court-appointed virtual attorney. You don’t have to answer that question.”